In combat situations, it may be advantageous to know the location of damage from projectiles on equipment. Such functionality would give insight to the personnel being fired upon in that they may be able to determine from which direction the fire was originating as well as what equipment may have been damaged by the projectiles. Similar functionality may be built in to body armor which may increase the probability of saving a life by providing instant wound information.
One solution for providing this functionality uses an active sensor system to detect the hits. A powered circuit is connected to the equipment, and when a hit occurs, parts of the circuit are broken. Detecting the location of the broken part of the circuit indicates where a hit took place. However, this requires that the circuit be continually powered. This leads to increased cost and complexity as batteries may have to be integrated into the system as well. The increased weight is also problematic, especially in body armor applications.